5)
“The abdomen, the chest, and the brain will forever be shut from the
intrusion of the wise and humane surgeon.” - Sir John Eric Ericksen,
British surgeon, appointed Surgeon-Extraordinary to Queen Victoria
1873.

6)
“Such startling announcements as these should be depreciated as being
unworthy of science and mischievious to to its true progress” - Sir
William Siemens, 1880, on Edison’s announcement of a successful light bulb.

7)
“We are probably nearing the limit of all we can know about astronomy.” -
Simon Newcomb, astronomer, 1888

8)
“Fooling around with alternating current is just a waste of time. Nobody
will use it, ever.” - Thomas Edison, 1889

9)
“The more important fundamental laws and facts of physical science have
all been discovered, and these are now so firmly established that the
possibility of their ever being supplanted in consequence of new
discoveries is exceedingly remote…. Our future discoveries must be
looked for in the sixth place of decimals.” - physicist Albert. A.
Michelson, 1894

10)
“It is apparent to me that the possibilities of the aeroplane, which two
or three years ago were thought to hold the solution to the [flying
machine] problem, have been exhausted, and that we must turn elsewhere.”
- Thomas Edison, 1895

11)
“The demonstration that no possible combination of known substances, known
forms of machinery, and known forms of force can be united in a
practicable machine by which men shall fly for long distances through the
air, seems to the writer as complete as it is possible for the
demonstration of any physical fact to be.” - astronomer S. Newcomb, 1906

12)
“Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value.” - Marechal
Ferdinand Foch, Professor of Strategy, Ecole Superieure de Guerre, 1911

13)
“Caterpillar landships are idiotic and useless. Those officers and men
are wasting their time and are not pulling their proper weight in the war”
- Fourth Lord of the British Admiralty, 1915, in regards to use of tanks
in war.

14)
“Professor Goddard does not know the relation between action and
reaction and the need to have something better than a vacuum against
which to react. He seems to lack the basic knowledge ladled out daily
in high schools.” - 1921 New York Times editorial about Robert
Goddard’s revolutionary rocket work.

15)
“The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who
would pay for a message sent to nobody in particular?” - David
Sarnoff’s associates in response to his urgings for investment in the
radio in the 1920s.

16)
“All a trick.” “A Mere Mountebank.” “Absolute swindler.” “Doesn’t know
what he’s about.” “What’s the good of it?” “What useful purpose will it
serve?” - Members of Britain’s Royal Society, 1926, after a demonstration
of television.

17)
“This foolish idea of shooting at the moon is an example of the absurd
lengths to which vicious specialisation will carry scientists.”
-A.W. Bickerton, physicist, NZ, 1926

18)
“Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau.” -
Irving Fisher, Professor of Economics, Yale University, 1929.

19)
“There is not the slightest indication that nuclear energy will ever be
obtainable. It would mean that the atom would have to be shattered at
will.” — Albert Einstein, 1932

20)
“The energy produced by the atom is a very poor kind of thing. Anyone who
expects a source of power from the transformation of these atoms is
talking moonshine” - Ernst Rutherford, 1933

21)
“The whole procedure [of shooting rockets into space]…presents
difficulties of so fundamental a nature, that we are forced to dismiss the
notion as essentially impracticable, in spite of the author’s insistent
appeal to put aside prejudice and to recollect the supposed impossibility
of heavier-than-air flight before it was actually accomplished.” Richard
van der Riet Wooley, British astronomer, reviewing P.E. Cleator’s “Rockets
in Space”, Nature, March 14, 1936

23)
“Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons.” - Popular
Mechanics, forecasting the relentless march of science, 1949

24)
“I have traveled the length and breadth of this country and talked
with the best people, and I can assure you that data processing is a
fad that won’t last out the year.” - The editor in charge of business
books for Prentice Hall, 1957

25)
“Space travel is bunk” -Sir Harold Spencer Jones, Astronomer Royal of
Britain, 1957, two weeks before the launch of Sputnik

26)
“There is practically no chance communications space satellites will be
used to provide better telephone, telegraph, television, or radio
service inside the United States.” -T. Craven, FCC Commissioner, 1961

27)
“But what… is it good for?” - Engineer at the Advanced Computing
Systems Division of IBM, 1968, commenting on the microchip.

28)
“There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.” - Ken
Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp.,
1977

cucio

12-26-2009, 06:03 AM

LOL, epic fail, except perhaps 9) which doesn't really belong among these, since it is properly qualified and nowhere as categorical as the rest. For instance, Newton's mechanics still remain valid in a wide range of situations, despite being useless at very large or very small scales. I guess one could still argue whether relativity or quantum mechanics are either "important and fundamental" or "sixth decimal stuff", compared to traditional mechanics, optics and electromagnetism.

I'll end with some simple quotes: ''''''' X-P

hollywood9826

12-26-2009, 11:14 AM

Number 8 is funny because in Assasins creed two thier is saying Edison was trying to debunk Teslas AC power and they shows a video of AC power electrocuting an elphant.